


In Over His Head

by JRaylin441



Series: Briareus [13]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: And trying too hard to impress a guy he totally bullied when they were kids, Gen, Kai is back and Very Concerned, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, he's also super traumatized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 14:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7175315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRaylin441/pseuds/JRaylin441
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kai meets up with Ed a year later, and has to come to terms with his misconceptions about his ability to handle the military. He also gets a chance to see Ed in action, and it's not quite like what he was expecting.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“Watch.” It was a lazy sort of command, delivered by-holy shit holy shit he’s talking to me-Colonel Mustang. The man was smirking, though his thumb was rubbing against his forefinger as if begging to snap.</i></p><p> </p><p>  <i>Kai waited. And watched. And after a few more seconds of listening, he realized that the sound had not been a cry, but rather the sound of laughter. He also realized that Elric was losing. </i></p><p> </p><p>Continuation of Self-Condemning</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Over His Head

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is a continuation of the oneshot called Self-Condemning, but it happens a year later. Unfortunately, that requires the story to happen completely outside of the timeline. I wrote it because, when I posted it on FF, many people requested a sequel, so I had to ditch the timeline to make it work.
> 
> Basically, it's been a year since Ed tried really hard to keep Kai from joining the military.

Kai couldn’t claim that he had been expecting this, so much as it had been a scenario contemplated late at night, when he couldn’t fall asleep and his mind was given free reign. _What if I have to work with Ed?_ The thought would crop up and then be dismissed almost immediately. Because Kai couldn’t decide if he was looking forward to or dreading the encounter. He had proven Edward Elric wrong. All the comments the boy had made the day of his enlistment, claiming that the army would chew him up and spit him out so that he wouldn’t like who he saw in the mirror anymore, were wrong. Kai had been here for almost a year now, and while he had definitely changed, it was not for the worse. ( _the boy on the ground and the blood on his hands and when had this been part of the plan it was supposed to be an army a grown man this was a kid a-_ no, no thinking about that, especially not before bed).

If nothing else, though, he had always known that he would need time to prepare before the encounter. The plan was to spend a day or two alone, organizing his mind, the moment he received a file with the words _Commanding Officer: Major Edward Elric_ across the top. Not because there were any bad memories to hide, no. More because he wanted to prepare a perfect mental state to present to the boy. Somehow, spending the first day of his enlistment with Elric had cemented a need inside Kai to prove himself to the bratty kid.

This situation, then, was not optimal. Kai had been dressed for bed, about to crawl into his bunk in the dorms, when the announcement had come over the loudspeakers in the hall. _All men to assist Major Edward Elric. Intersection of Ninth and Collins._ The voice was smooth and efficient. Pajama pants had been stripped off in a second and replaced with his uniform pants. The shirt was covered by his jacket. On his way out the door, Private Kai Hauser grabbed his gun off his dresser and strapped the holster around his waist.

There were a few other people running down the hallway, but a lot of the guys had been enjoying their first night of leave and had gone out for drinks. Kai… hadn’t been in the mood ( _did he really think this would change anything the boy was still dead just get up move on hiding from it won’t change it)_. It figured that tonight would be the night of an emergency.

At the main gate, most of the men arranged themselves into their units. Kai, the only member of his unit there, slipped in behind another group, hoping to be of some help. When the necessary arrangements had been made, the gathering of about twenty men moved down the street, headed toward the intersection of Ninth and Collins. At the head of the mass, Kai could see the dignified figure of Colonel Mustang, one of the heroes from Ishval.

It wasn’t actually all that hard to find. The sound of explosions accompanied by sudden spires of rock acted as a compass. When they got close enough to see what was happening, Private Hauser felt himself fall back into his mission mentality. It was the only way he could convince himself to keep moving instead of stopping to stare. In this way, he was able to clinically analyze what he was seeing while keeping up with the smart pace Colonel Mustang was setting.

There were six men. _Six alchemists_ , he corrected, as he kept watching. Two of the men were hovering at the edges of the scene. Once every few seconds, they would throw an attack into the fray. One of them ice, the other water. In the center of the confrontation was a writhing mess of four bodies. Three of them were huge, hulking shapes that fired off one merciless alchemic attack after another. The ground beneath the group rocked from the force of it, as someone pulled at the pavement, and someone else brought up the tar, and another person shook the very ground.

In the center of it all, _there_ , was a whirling glint of gold. As they got closer, Kai watched the glint resolve into a teenage boy, now sixteen. Edward Elric was there in the thick of it, surrounded by three fully-grown men. There was a sound like crying, and Kai moved to run into the confrontation. He was almost there when a hand reached out and stopped him.

“Watch.” It was a lazy sort of command, delivered by-holy shit holy shit he’s talking to me-Colonel Mustang. The man was smirking, though his thumb was rubbing against his forefinger as if begging to snap.

Kai waited. And watched. And after a few more seconds of listening, he realized that the sound had not been a cry, but rather the sound of laughter. He also realized that Elric was losing. It was a slow thing, and it probably wouldn’t have been the case if all the men had been clustered around him. The problem was the two men on the outside. Every now and again, they would catch him off guard, and land a glancing blow. The surprise would throw the teenager off for a second, and that was enough time for one of the nearer men to deliver a solid hit. The damage that Edward was delivering was not enough to off-set the effects of the hits. A slow thing, yes. But a sure thing ( _he was just a kid too and he was headed the same way the same way why were kids fighting_ ).

And the idiot was laughing, grinning a vicious smile that took up his whole face.

The company of men waited in limbo for something to happen, until one of the outside men landed another hit, and Colonel Mustang seemed to lose control of his composure for a split-second. The man’s body burned bright with his spontaneous combustion. For a second, the five remaining men froze and reassessed their situation.

“I had it under control, bastard!” The yell came from the boy in a red coat just as the fighting started back up, and Kai couldn’t control the startled _ha_ that slipped out. Because nothing about that sentence was correct. He couldn’t help but notice, though, that there was no more smiling or laughing. The once graceful movements of the major were now rushed and deadly. Somehow, the arrival of more people had caused a shift in the focus of the fight.

“Idiot.” The word was muttered, and for a second Kai thought he had heard it wrong. But no, the colonel’s hands were in fists at his sides, and he looked less than happy.

“I told you we shouldn’t have brought so many. You know he’s only worried now.” A woman that had been quietly standing next to Colonel Mustang now spoke up, and Kai wondered how he had missed her before. He also wondered if the colonel allowed all of his subordinates to be so, well, insubordinate. A flash of memory reminded Kai that Elric belonged to Colonel Mustang as well. So, probably.

Then her words sunk in. The focus of the fight _had_ shifted, and it was because the youngest participant, the _outnumbered_ participant, had decided that he needed to protect everyone.

Elric clapped and slammed his hands to the pavement. (The colonel called out _Ed!_ desperately and _that_ was against protocol. How did that group even function?) A circular wall burst out of the street, rising like a coliseum around the fight. Kai politely pretended not to hear the word spat out by the colonel as he ran forward.

Chalk. Of course the man had chalk in his pocket. It seemed like every alchemist stuffed their pockets full of the stuff. In a second, a circle sprung to life under the guidance of gloved hands, and a ladder grew from the stones of the wall. Kai figured it was easier to make a ladder than it was to carve a path through. The colonel flew up the rungs as soon as they formed, and the woman followed directly after him. After a moment of hesitation, Kai followed suit.

It really was shaped like a coliseum. From the top of the wall, Kai was provided a dramatic view of the whole fight. It seemed less urgent like this. Like those in conflict were actors on a stage. Ahead, he could see the two officers moving hesitantly down the steep slope of the sides, toward the fight. Then, a true cry rose up from the fight, a sudden spurt of red as a concrete spike caught the teen’s arm, and the figures abandoned all caution, practically sliding down toward the lower part of the wall. It was lucky that Edward didn’t notice, honestly, as that probably would have been more of a distraction than anything else.

The cry transformed into a shout. “ _Now_ , Al!” For a second, Kai stared, waiting for something more to happen. He noticed that the colonel and his subordinate had also stopped. But nothing was immediately changing. It wasn’t until wandering eyes shifted from the fight to the edge of the coliseum that Kai saw it. A man in a large suit of armor was climbing over the side of the wall. The moment he hauled himself over the lip, two gloved hands smacked together and pressed to the ground. The walls of the coliseum rippled, and a hand grew from the side near the remaining long-range attacker. Kai looked on in disbelief as the man’s head was dashed against the remaining wall. Instantly, the struggling body fell limp, and it was unclear from this distance whether the cause was death or unconsciousness.

Elric made short work of the others. His sudden increase in speed and effectiveness made it clear how much attention he had been devoting to the outer man. Now, he finished the three in less than a minute, bringing a solid hand crashing down upon their heads. No more laughter, just a frenetic savagery that tore down everything in its path. Out of the corner of his eye, Kai could see that the colonel had increased his rush to the boy’s side. Colonel Mustang’s feet hit the dusty ground at the same time that the last man crumpled.

The boy-soldier (because Kai could see now that that was what Elric was) stood crouched in the center of the silent coliseum. His body was perched on the balls of his feet and his lamplight eyes flashed dangerously in their whirlwind scan of the area. The commanding officer approached with palms out in front of him. His footsteps were question marks in the dust.

The rabid wolf panted, mouth open and skin sweat-slicked.

The panther padded forward.

For a moment, it looked like it was all about to go to shit. Elric’s face twisted up in a snarl, and he made to clap his hands together.

“Ed!” The voice was flint against steel. A strike. A spark.

The boy fell back into himself. He seemed to notice for the first time that he was surrounded by the bodies of men. The look that crossed his face was concerned, but not devastated, so Kai would assume that they weren’t dead. Still, as each second passed, the boy curled more and more into himself, gathering his composure around him like a tattered cloak. For a moment, the gloved paw of his superior came to rest on his shoulder. Under its weight, the boy straightened and the man shrunk, as though a transfer of energy had occurred. And then Elric shrugged it off and turned to clap away the coliseum.

He moved off to follow the man in armor, and he did not look back.

Behind him, his superior officer watched with a straight spine and wrecked eyes. The woman’s hand perched like a butterfly against his arm.

And Kai huddled on the ground, where he had been hiding since the fight had ended. Because he was not ready for Elric to see him. Not like this. Because he remembered words from a year ago. _You’re being naïve. It will chew you up and spit you out. And when you finish you’ll either be dead, or wish that you were. The person you are right now? The army will kill him._ And his own words in response. _Just because you can’t handle the trauma of war doesn’t mean no one can. You’re just a kid who’s in way over his head._ And he remembered the burning heat of the gun in his hand and the way the kid had crumpled to the floor. The kid who had been holding a gun but standing in the corner, crouched over a little sister Kai hadn’t seen until after the boy collapsed.

He didn’t want Elric to see him like this. Because Ed had been _right_.

But so had Kai.


End file.
